Voice Recognition
by windwolf901
Summary: Emma has trouble with names in the weeks following 1x22 – A Land Without Magic. One-shot.


Characters: Emma, featuring Archie, August, and the Charmings

Description: Emma has trouble with names in the weeks following the 1x22 – A Land Without Magic. One-shot.

Voice Recognition

Once the purple cloud had dissipated and the adrenaline ride was over Emma Swan found herself in a world that was different from the one she knew, among people who were not as they had first seemed.

She stopped calling people by name for awhile. Who needed to when you were talking with the person? They knew who they were and so did she… now. It could be confusing – almost everyone having a different name than what she had met them as. Oh, she used names every once in awhile, partly to make it seem like she was more comfortable with all this than she really was. Granny was the easiest (some people never changed) and the dwarves were character descriptives straight out of a Disney film so she tossed those around a fair bit almost as a joke. After that she moved on to some of the other familiar fairytale names– changing Ruby to Red wasn't that difficult, and she almost never called Gepetto 'Marco' anymore. Somehow, it was the sheer ridiculousness of calling someone 'Blue Fairy' that also made it easier.

It was harder with the normal names. Nobody seemed to notice that it took her a moment to remember that Abigail was Kathryn Nolan and Thomas was Sean Herman. She was getting pretty good at calling Gold 'Rumplestiltskin', though she thought that should have been a bigger deal than it was. Apparently there had to be a dagger involved. Emma didn't know much about the world she'd been thrust into, or the people in it but she tried to study the book when no one was around. She didn't get far; it felt wrong to pry into their pasts. She sure as hell didn't want anyone prying into hers.

Most were pretty good about that. Jiminy tried, but he'd been a therapist for almost thirty years (and a conscious before that), so she supposed it was his nature. Emma couldn't bring herself to call him Jiminy. The mental image of a cricket walking a dog always made her laugh. She compromised by shortening it to Jim, which occasionally caught the attention of Abigail's husband, Frederick. It was nice to know that other people were having trouble with names as well.

"It would a lot for anyone to adjust to," her son's therapist was saying in his usual quiet manner. She'd been having coffee at the diner and he joined her at the counter.

Emma shrugged. "I always thought I came from a broken home," she said. "Turns out it was the world that was broken."

Jiminy smiled sadly and for a moment she thought she saw a flash of guilt in his eyes. But then it was gone and he stood up, coughing. "Have a good day princess."

"Sheriff," she corrected. Titles were just as important as names in this new reality and it left Emma clinging to her badge like a lifeline.

* * *

Strangers passing on the street bowed their heads when she walked with Henry. Her son took it in stride but Emma hated it. It was worse when she was with them. Them. _Her parents_. People would stop what they were doing and bow and they behaved like it wasn't the strangest thing in the world.

She made a special effort to call them by their pre-curse names. She sometimes mixed up 'James' and 'David', but made fewer slips once she switched to using his 'Charming' nickname. And while it felt weird to call her roommate Snow, it was less weird than calling her that other thing. The one they all knew she wasn't saying. _Yet_, she told herself.

It was what she had always been too afraid to dream of – parents who loved and wanted her – but that didn't make it any easier after a lifetime on her own. They were patient though, and she appreciated that more than anything. Regardless, between the imp she still owed a favor to, the evil queen out to take her son away from her, and keeping the town running they were too busy to sit around and talk about the time they had all lost. She knew eventually they would want more from her. Emma wanted it too… she just didn't know how.

She decided to try it out with her phone. She changed their names in her address book and let it ring a few times while she looked at the call display. It took some getting used to, but after a week or so Emma found herself smiling when 'Mom', 'Dad' or 'Home' popped up on her screen.

So she moved on to using the voice recognition feature. Things were most awkward between her and Snow. Their friendship had been irrevocably changed the day the curse was broken and while Emma liked the fiercer woman she was getting to know, she sometimes found herself missing Mary Margaret. Part of her was afraid breaking the curse had meant losing the friendship that had helped keep her in town. It was ridiculous, but Emma found that it was easier to think of James in the new way. She'd never held much hope of finding her birth father and hadn't been close to David Nolan. It made things simpler.

"Call Dad," she instructed her phone one afternoon as she turned the ignition in her patrol car.

He picked up on the second ring and Emma let go of the breath she'd been holding. "Hello?"

"Hey, I need a favor. I got a call and I'm not going to be able to pick Henry up after all. Can you swing by and grab him for me?"

"Sure, no problem."

"Thanks." It wasn't so daunting after all, and Emma felt the burden of expectation lift a little.

* * *

Things were easier when Henry was around. She still couldn't say it in person, but Emma enjoyed teasingly calling them 'gramps' and 'gran'. It both was and wasn't familial. When they were all together things felt simple, warm, right. The way she'd always imagined home feeling like. When it was just the three of them the atmosphere was more strained. The air was so thick with things understood yet unsaid that it was almost hard to breathe. She could handle it better one-on-one, but it was better with Henry. Everything was. She may have been the hope for Storybrooke, but Henry was hers.

One evening on their way home from the office she asked him to call Snow White and tell her they were on their way. "Just hit speed dial 2," she said.

Henry eagerly opened the touch screen and put them on speakerphone. "Calling Mom?" he asked as the phone rang.

Emma glanced over at the screen and shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant to a ten year-old.

"I thought you weren't calling them that yet."

"It's a work in progress," she said, keeping her eyes on the road. She pretended not to notice the grin that lit up his face.

* * *

Emma was pretty sure that he told them. It wasn't mentioned, but the next day there was a unicorn mobile on her bed when she got home from work.

"Seriously?" She leaned against the doorframe, holding the delicate thing up as Snow walked past her with arms full of laundry.

Snow smiled and placed the pile of folded clothes on her bed. "It was made for you. We thought you should have it."

"Um, thanks."

Emma recognized it from the pawn shop and didn't want to know what it had cost them to get it back. She hung it in the window so that when she lay in bed she could look at it from across the room. It was beautiful and perfect. It wasn't long before she hated it.

When she looked at it she thought of her childhood and how she'd never had anything like it. How she'd never really had anything. It made her think of all the time they had lost together, of the family Regina's thirst for vengeance had denied her. It reminded her of everything that was broken inside her still. All the pieces she'd taped together for the sake of appearances, the hurt she held on to.

She'd never been good at facing the ghosts of her childhood. They continued to haunt her, putting her always either in fight or flight– never in a place where she could simply accept them and move on, no longer letting them rule her life. Emma Swan had been too broken for too long to know how to be whole.

She stared at the mobile for weeks before taking it down and cutting the strings. She never got to have the life the glass unicorns whispered of, but even broken what was left was still beautiful. Emma thought maybe she could be too. She left a unicorn on her bedside table, kept one on her desk in the sheriff's office, attached one to Henry's backpack, and strung the rest up on the rearview mirrors of each of their vehicles, including her patrol car. They didn't ask her about it.

* * *

August had become a welcome sight for sore eyes. Breaking the curse hadn't saved him but the return of magic had. Snow and James tolerated him with gritted teeth. She understood, but couldn't help thinking they were being unreasonable. According to the book, Snow White of all people should know children couldn't be expected to keep secrets and promises of that magnitude. If the roles had been reversed she would have ran as well. She had more than once.

"Maybe it was supposed to be this way," she mused, hopping off the bike.

"We both know you would have been better off with your mother raising you. You could have had her if not for me."

"I could have had her if I'd been born a day later too." Unclipping the helmet she handed it back to him. "Besides, can you picture the fairest of them all as a cougar?"

He chuckled, then sobered. "I was supposed to be there for you and I wasn't. I'm sorry."

"You're here now." She smiled. "You keep me sane."

He did. August understood better than anyone what it was like to be from one world but raised in another. And she never felt like she had to call him Pinocchio.

* * *

She was looking for something amongst her boxes one day when she stumbled across the file. All those years of searching and the truth was nothing it could ever have held. Of all the scenarios she'd imagined, her parents being Snow White and Prince Charming, forced to send her through a magical wardrobe to escape a curse was most certainly not one of them. She knew all the reasons parents abandoned their children, and her orphaned upbringing wasn't caused by any of them. But then, she hadn't really been abandoned, had she?

Emma took the weathered folder and her garbage can out to the back patio and started a fire. The smoke filled her nostrils as she threw the first papers in. It smelled like release.

"What are you doing?" Snow asked, closing the door behind her and pulling her sweater tight to keep warm. She came and stood beside her, noticed the half-empty file in her hands. "Is that…?"

"It was time," she said, tossing another couple of papers into the flames.

They both watched them burn. "Will you come inside when you're done?"

"Yeah." Snow turned to leave and Emma took a deep breath. _Now_,a voice inside her urged. She turned her back, finally, to the ghosts burning in the fire. "Mom?"

She could hear the other woman's intake of breath. "Yes?"

"You can stay if you want. I mean, if you don't have anything you need to do."

Snow gave her that smile that she associated so strongly with when Emma had called Mary Margaret her family. "Of course."

They both turned to watch the flames and Emma added the last of the story she'd thought was hers but wasn't to the bucket.

When she stepped back Snow took her hand. "We're going to be okay," she whispered.

Emma wasn't sure if it was meant for her or not but she answered anyway. "I know."


End file.
